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Tablets, Tablets, Tablets

pete

Brassica Oleracea
Staff member
Administrator
I'm going a tad non-musical with this post, but I think a few of you will get some benefit out of it.

I'm the proud owner of three different tablet computers:

* Very old Fujitsu Stylistic 5010D Windows Tablet. Made in 2004. They sell for about $100 on eBay.
* iPad 1. They sell for about $350 on eBay for a 16gb version.
* Kindle Keyboard 3G. They're $140, new.

Now, if you really wanted a cheap tablet that doesn't have mutitouch (it's got a stylus), the Fujitsu isn't bad: you can install Kindle and Nook apps, as well as apps that can read PDF and ePUB files. You can also play games and stuff on it. The drawbacks: it weighs about two pounds, the LCD display isn't the best and it's kinda slow. The maximum battery life is only about two hours. I use this for my one IT certification practice test app and it works beautifully for that. Someone also mentioned that there's an app out there -- somewhere -- that you can use to display music and tap a pedal (either USB or MIDI) to turn the pages. As this old tablet has a really ginormous display (I think it's 12.1"), it'd be perfect for that. Especially at $100.

The iPad 1 is great. Really. The multitouch implementation is the best I've seen on any tablet. Fun to use, etc. The screen is also extremely crisp, so it's OK for reading ... indoors. You've also got a great selection of applications, but not as many as the Fujitsu. This also means support for just about every eBook format. The battery life is extremely good, too.

The iPad 3 (or 2S) should be out in a couple months. That's going to drop the prices on the iPad 1 and 2. If you want 'em, that is: the iPad 3 is supposed to be much betterer, with much higher resolution screen, twice the speed, thinner and lighter, and less expensive.

Then there's my Kindle Keyboard. Why the heck did I buy it? Well, two reasons: the Kindle Keyboard is the only Kindle that has free 3G access to ALL websites -- although browsing them is a bit of a hassle. The Kindle Touch has access to only Wikipedia, Amazon and a couple other websites. It's also got, unarguably, the bestest screen for reading and a battery life that's measured in months -- if you're not doing much. The disadvantage is that the screen is slightly smaller than that of a standard paperback and the web experience would be much, much better if it had a true joystick or omnidirectional nub, like you see on a lot of laptops.

(Good thing to note: the Kindle Keyboard has two versions: one with "special offers" and one without. The "special offers" are only displayed when you're not using the device, so the only time you see it is when you turn the unit on. They don't display if you're reading a book or surfin' the web. Save $40 and buy the thing with "special offers.")

===============

Because I am computer geek at work, I've had the opportunity to check out:

* The Toshiba convertibles ("convertible" = "Twist the screen one way and it's a tablet. Twist it the other way and it's a fully-featured laptop"). Too thick and heavy.

* The thinnest Lenovo convertible. Lot thinner than the Toshibas, but not thin enough to use it comfortably as a tablet.

* The ASUS Macbook Air Ripoff Zenbook. Not a tablet. Light and thin. Multitouch trackpad absolutely, positively sucks. Considering you're really not supposed to use this thing with an external keyboard & mouse, this is a big, big minus. (Other reviewers have said approximately the same thing.)

* The Macbook Airs (11" and 13"). Not a tablet. Light and thin and has a really, really nice multitouch trackpad. Some folks will not like the fact it's a Mac, though. Expensive: the 11" Air and 13" ASUS are about the same price.
 
My Macbook pro died last year, and since I'm on musician salary, I bought a Koby Kyros (7024 I believe is the Model).

In two words, it's garbage.

It's running Android 2.1 (Froyo I believe), and Android is not past 3.0 I believe, so the apps haven't updated in ever. I can't get android market, and instead get AppCenter, which is a misnomer because the only thing there is "Angry Birds" and trash. I wasn't expensive ($180), but not even worth that. I had to download skype through the internet freeware site, so I can't videochat with my girlfriend, and it crashes constantly. It also crashed the other week, and deleted all my saved contents, which included "to do lists" and websites I frequent or need in the future, which annoyed me terribly.

I can't wait to go "Office Space" on this thing when I buy myself a real computer someday soon.

Anyhow, that's my rant. The sell the thing at Walmart, so if you see anything with the name Koby, run, run away.
 
We're still all Mac/iPad/iPhone

I've had a Macintosh since the days of the 128K - indeed, I bought it to write my patent application back in 1984. (The same machine, upgraded to Mac Plus standards, still works just fine and resides in its carrying bag in our back closet).

One of the things that we liked about the early Macintosh form factor was that it was portable. I started using a computer at work back in the days when our agency only had a computer at the national office, so I had to schlepp my equipment around. The first Macs were portable, but only just.

We put off upgrading into the newer color machines due to the form factor, and I was intensely interested when the first truly portable Mac, the heavy Macintosh Portable, made its debut. However, we did not make the shift to "laptops" until the release of the Powerbook 100, which happily coincided with my move to management down here.

We've stayed with laptops ever since, and currently both have Macbook Airs, this for their maximum portability and their hard to damage memory arrays. (I had a bad hard drive failure a year ago, and resolved to avoid that in the future.) Our Macbook Airs, one small and one large, weigh next to nothing, offer all of the bells and whistles needed for the average user, and still practice the "simple" Macintosh way of doing things.

(Along those lines, I really miss the Newton system. My last Messagepad 2100 works just fine even now, although maintenance of the software has dropped off since Apple canned it in 1997. I was a pretty big noise in the Newton world up to that point, as an online talk show host and general gadfly prodding the development team to do it better. At the very end, Apple had a fully functioning Palm sized version of the Newton system, ready to produce. Steve Jobs killed it, and I had it in for him ever since.)

We finally went with the iPhone when the 4 model came out, again for compatibility. Moving to the easily programmed iPhone meant that I could dump the Palm system PDA and carry only one small device. (It has come close to, but never equal to, the Newton system in many areas.) Again, we've had nothing to regret the decision.

Then came the iPad. I was skeptical when I first saw it (and still have some reservations - printing is difficult, machine to machine communication is still in the evolutional stages, and holding the thing is sometimes awkward), but my lovely wife positively loves the thing. I use it to watch movies when on the exercise bike, but for little else. I still think that it is for the "non-serious" user, and a recent article in Macworld, where the author tried to use it exclusively for work for a week, bears this out.

But, you'd have to pry it from my lovely wife's warm, slender fingers...

And, a factor that most don't consider is the availability of the help through the Apple stores. Their Genius Bar is free to all, takes advanced appointments, and works through any problem that you might have. I've brought in entire networks, balky laser printers - anything related to our computers, iPhones, and iPad - they deal with it all, and without fee for software issues. No other maker or system publisher even comes close to this performance.

It doesn't do you much good if there's no Apple store around (here in Houston, we have five in operation, with a sixth, "flagship" store just about ready to open), but the chain is spreading like wildfire, so the likelihood of one being close is increasing by the month.
 
What do you need a tablet for? If it's as a replacement of a PC/Mac with a real keyboard, well, you still need the keyboard. If it's about independency, forget it again, most tablets hardly make it a day, and a phone (as smart as it may be) still has a rather small screen. Biggest issue is that you buy an expensive single point of failure - it crashes, you're toast.

I own a Kindle keyboard (sans 3G, just WiFi), and must say it's the bestest thing to actually *read* stuff (and not just surf the wild west web).

If I had tons of money, I'd probably buy an XL Kindle and use it as permanent "real paper" replacement. For the rest, there's my Nexus, or my PC. And if one of them fails...no problem.
 
What do you need a tablet for? If it's as a replacement of a PC/Mac with a real keyboard, well, you still need the keyboard.
Oddly enough, I do understand the fascination with the "Ultrabook," which would be a notebook that replaces your desktop computer. IMO, there's really no market for an Ultrabook. If you do the research.

I could build an absolutely fantabulous I5 desktop for about $700. I could then buy an extremely decent remanufactured Dell D630 laptop for another $300. Both bases covered for a bit less than the ASUS Zenbook. However, a lot of people say, "Buy a laptop AND a desktop? I don't have the cash for that!" and will opt to buy a really nice laptop that has all the features of my $700 desktop for twice the price.

(Here's a FWIW: I owned the 1st generation I7 -- "Bloomfield," IIRC When that dies, I upgraded to the "Sandy Bridge" I7. While there's a considerable difference in speed ON PAPER, the only people that'll notice the difference are folks that have $1.2 trillion CAD programs or use Photoshop CS 5.5. There are no games that take advantage of all that speed and Windows 8 will run just peachy on both the new I7 and the old I7. Also, the Bloomfield is almost exactly the same speed as the Sandy Bridge I5. If you want a serious performance increase, buy a new SATA rev. 3 (6Gb/s) controller and a matching high-end SSD. MAJOR speed increase.)

Another thing is that you could still have that $700 desktop and get an iPad. Hey, that's so much like a regular laptop, that there's a rumor that the new iPad is going to ditch the "iOS" that was on the older iPads and go for a modified version of the Macintosh's OS, 10.7.3. Even if they don't, I could use an iPad to do a LOT of what I'd do with a regular laptop. I'd probably just buy a Bluetooth keyboard and the video out cable, so I could connect it to a projector to do presentations.

=============

> I've had a Macintosh since the days of the 128K
The machine that started my computer career was a Mac 128K upgraded to the 512K. The first Mac I personally owned was an SE/30, which I bought the week it came out. For about $7000. The last one I owned was a G5 Tower. I've got an iMac Aluminum Core 2 Duo at work and Macbook Pro Core 2 Duo I "inherited" from work: the screen was cracked by a user. It's a "user-abuse" issue, so no warranty. Looks fine. From a specific angle ....

I've got an acquaintance at work that has an Apple Lisa. I've told her that if she doesn't want it, I'll be more than happy to take it.

> Macintosh Portable
Weighing in at 16lbs. Most folks called it the "Macintosh Luggable."
 
> Macintosh Portable
Weighing in at 16lbs. Most folks called it the "Macintosh Luggable."


De facto, yes, but compared to the original upright design, it was a considerable reduction in size. I originally flirted with the Osborn portable machine (which weighed something in the neighborhood of forty pounds, so badly did I want to get away from handwritten reports. (I have scrivener's palsy in a big way - that's how desperate I was for an escape.)

However, iffen you wanted to order one, you used the de jure name, Macintosh Portable.
 
The other day, I bought another iPad (original) on eBay. 64gb model. $275, including shipping and fees. Good battery, minty condition. I was thinking about getting the new iPad (call it an "iPad 3." It's easier that way), but I started thinking, "For $599, I could buy a big-screen TV." I also had a couple things I theorized come to pass:

* The new Retina Display really does look great, but it makes those thousands of apps that were written on the iPad 2 and lower look ... not as good as they used to. Parodying an Internet meme from last year, "The res is too damn high!"
* Because new apps are going to take the higher res into account, application sizes will bloat. I've heard that the average is between 200% and 1000%. That sorta means that the best iPad to buy is the one with the most memory and that's $700 ($829, if you want the 4G access, plus monthly 4G fees).

I'm primarily going to use this as an eBook reader. I'm also thinking about getting a $10 app that turns the iPad into a secondary, touch screen display. Hey, it'd make a killer application dock. It's also slightly lighter than the new iPad.
 
I've been following this thread and on a broader scale the smart phones/pads. The last post brings up many wwoorries I have.

Perhaps I'm a bit of a Luddite, but I can't understand the point of spending hundreds of dollars on a piece of electronic kit that's going to be obsolete in a year or two. Guys I work with regularly spend hundreds every years just to get the latest phone/tablet. And seel the old one on at a huge loss. Couple of years later these end up scrapped - as hazardous waste.

Tell me it makes sense, cos to me it doesn't.
 
There are a couple of ways at looking at purchasing a computer.

* The targeted approach. That's when you have a couple of things that the computer MUST do and you don't really care about anything else. As an example, you want to do basic word processing and maybe look at the Intarwebs every now and then. There's no need to spend $14,000 on a quad-processor Xeon-based machine with a $5000 graphics card. Hey, a used computer could fulfill this role and would cost you a couple hundred $ at most.

* Get the best because it's going to have some staying power. I generally tell folks to take this approach. If you buy a top-of-the-line computer (desktop, laptop or server), it's probably going to be at least four years before there's some new thing that's going to require a major computer upgrade or replacement. The new "thing" could be a new operating system that you just have to have, like Windows 8 (quick review: how is it different from 7, again?) or 3D monitors for teh n3w g@m3s.

This advice is definitely the way to go if you're buying a laptop. Most laptops are not upgrade-able beyond memory or hard drive size. In the case of the ASUS Zenbook and the Apple Airs, they're completely sealed. Opening 'em up to just install more memory voids your warranty.

There are a couple other considerations I should mention.

* I happen to own a good deal of Windows-only software and hardware. This means that if Apple wants me to buy a Mac, their equipment has to offer me the same functionality at a reasonable price. It doesn't. Hey, I have no desire to buy a $500 copy of Dreamweaver CS 5.5 because I switched to a Mac. Yes, BlueGriffon is free and pretty nice, but it's not Dreamweaver.

* TCO = Total Cost of Ownership. Too many people ignore this. As proven throughout my years working with computers and users, Macintoshes break down less often and people learn how to use one faster than on a Windows box. (FWIW, Linux boxes are great, provided you don't have to do the set-up yourself AND you never want to change ANYTHING.)

In the Tablet World, I take more of the Targeted approach than if I was talking about a desktop computer. My main desire is to be able to read an eBook or eMag in whatever format that's out there. I also want it to have a relatively intuitive interface, so I'm not having to mess with a billion settings. I don't want to have to worry about the battery dying three chapters into the book I'm reading. That makes "iPad" a good choice. The amount of money I wanted to spend meant either trying to get a steal on an iPad 2 or get the best specification iPad 1. I failed with the former (I bid on probably 25 iPad 2 auctions and got close, but not close enough) and succeeded with the latter.
 
Terry mentioned the Newton.

The newton I believe was made by Sharp. Back in the 1980s Sharp was working hard on creating PDAs that took finger input (similar to the early Palms). I was gifted an early sharp PDA back in my high school days from a Toyota executive (I won't mention which century that was). The device was brought into the US from Japan, as back then Japan was the test locale for all devices.

The interesting thing was that it did take pen or finger input on the screen. Or you could use the small keypad. It was for storing addresses and other miscellaneous things. I still have it in a storage box, matter of fact I came across it this past weekend - I'll see if I can find it again and take some pictures for the board.
 
Not quite as ancient, but I still have a functioning model of one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_III

It's getting a little harder to synch it with a PC, since so few computers these days have serial ports. I had to buy a serial to USB converter cable, and jump through some hoops to get it working.

We bought about 300 of them for management at the place I was working at the time, and since my team had to support them, I insisted that all my guys needed one too. Based on the damage / failure factor I saw in just the first year, I'm guessing that I have the last one from that batch that still works.

I do like the calendar & address book software functions when used on a real computer - on the device itself - not so much.
 
I also had a Palm. I think it was a IV, though. I think I have the original 9600 baud modem around somewhere, too.

I have a Crackberry from where I work. It does really nothing exceptionally well. I am, however, very happy with the note-taking and calendar features. For the former -- and because I have the BB with me most of the time -- it helps my deteriorating memory. For the latter, it syncs with my company's mail server. This allows me to not have to ask my wife 5 times a day if she's doing something after work.

I'd like to have a company-issued iPhone (which may happen). I wouldn't use it so much as a phone, but I like that I can stick a lot of MP3s on it and it's got voice control -- and voice assist, in the form of Siri.

I really like my iPads, but they're definitely not as portable as an iPhone.
 
I had an original Palm and we pushed out the Palm IIIs to our sales people. They were nice. I stopped using it when I got a palm phone. I think I finally threw it out (though functioning) a few years ago along with the 100/300 baud (manually switched) modem from my Apple IIe days.
 
I mentioned earlier about the ASUS Zenbook. We now have an almost 20% failure rate on these. And the warranty repairs take up to 10 days -- after they get it from you.

(Aside: it's amusing that the first link I got in Google when I was looking for images of the Zenbook was a review which comments, "The trackpad is the biggest flaw of this notebook.")

I'm disappointed. I really want to like the Zenbook. I do believe it's probably the best looking tablet ... because it looks exactly like a Macbook Air, but has a nicer looking keyboard.

Y'know, you can buy a Macbook Air and install Windows on it ....

FWIW, I do think that the #1 consideration my company had when purchasing these things was, "Is there a laptop out there that'll impress our clients?"
 
This thread tells me how hopelessly out of touch with the latest technology I really am. I'm still trying to figure out my Ipod.
 
While we each have a MacBook Air...

...one a small one and one a large one, style and appearance had nothing to do with my (or, rather, our) choice in the matter. The first consideration was the commonality of software (with the suites of stuff that we already possess and use on a continuing basis), the second was portability, and the third was weight.

Having toted laptops for well over twenty years now (and luggables for another decade before that), portability counts for a lot. I've considered other "light" computers in the past (the Macintosh Duo line, and the Sony ones as well), but the perfect storm of the MacBook Air was the first time that everything came together.

It always helps that price isn't a factor. However, prices have come down so much over the past twenty years that what we paid last fall and this January were a mere pittance compared to the first purchases back in 1984.

Regarding the Newton system:

Sharp and Apple did the early Messagepad 100 models, but by the time that the second generation Messagepad 110 was produced, it was an Apple product exclusively. (And, though it was claimed that the Sharp product was electronically identical to the Apple one, I witnessed numerous software anomalies between the two (worked on the Apple, didn't on the Sharp) that led me to believe that this was not the case.)

By the time the system reached maturation in the Messagepad 2000/2100 (which really worked, and worked very well), it was poised to enter the "smart phone" world (take a look at one and notice where the microphone and speaker are located), thus offering what you now get in an iPhone but in a generation-appropriate, considerably larger package.

The Newton system incorporated traditional computer functionality with portability and an input system (working handwriting recognition) that everyone could use and understand with minimal training (i.e., no learning curve like touch typing). Hammering away on a tiny little keyboard doesn't compare to handwriting, no way, no how. (And, the Newton system had a keyboard (actually, two - one real and one virtual) should people wish to go that way.)

The Palm PDAs had a form of handwriting recognition, that being Graffiti and/or Jot (which is what I used on them). However, there you wrote a series of letterforms in a box. On Newton devices, the extreme power of the processor (for the time and place) allowed you to write like you write on a piece of paper, including sideways, at an angle, or even upside down - the thing still resolved it out (and in the 2000/2100 models, did it very well).

It even accepts (with some minimal training on the user's part) script, printed input, or (perversely) a combination of the two, just so long as each word was either done in script or print. Watching it at work is like some sort of miracle - your words are there in your inked scrawl, but they are resolved (one by one) into typed out looking input in neatly formated form.

I still have a number of the things, having been a software developer for them for a couple of years. (My single product was Rinky Dink, a hockey coaching software package that allowed the coach to have a virtual whiteboard to diagram out plays (and show them in animated form - it was pretty slick.) While most interesting to the casual observer is the transparent 110 that I received from the hands of Scully himself, the most capable ones are the 'last generation' 2100 and eMate (intercapitals are nothing new with Apple).

The former was the Ferrari of the breed, allowing portability while still offering a decent sized screen for web browsing and handwriting entry. The latter is still prized by some journalists, who prefer the "drop ten feet on the concrete" durability of the one-time educational market oriented device to modern laptops. It works in the same fashion as a Messagepad, only coming with a clamshell screen permanently attached to a keyboard (on the 2000/2100, the keyboard is a separate item). The eMate even has a tripod socket on the bottom, allowing a camera tripod to serve as a typing desk.

Both accepted a PCMCIA card format add-on card. The 2100 has two slots, allowing use of one for a memory card and the second for a cellular phone network one or a modem.

I have fired up both over the past few years, and it is amazing how well they still hold up compared to modern laptops and the iPhone. They are monochrome, of course - a sort of olive green on muddy brown screen color that isn't up to modern display standards. But, you don't need to use backlighting with the display if you have adequate ambient light to see by - a major powersaving feature. And, you can web browse on one as fast as the modem card will allow. And, the wonderful handwriting recognition works just as well as it did in 1997.

(The handwriting recognition (HWR) software used by the Newton was developed by the Russian post office, of all places. I guess that if you can deal with a Cyrillic scrawl (and poor Russian handwriting is nigh well on undecipherable), then English letterforms are like falling off a log. Paragraph (the recognition software) was ported over to the Pocket PC PDAs, where it works in much the same way on more modern equipment.)

Back in the day, I hosted the Newton segment of AOL, with a weekly "talk show" titled Nothin' But Newton. We did on-line help for Newton users, as well as general chat and monthly trivia contests with free time prizes for the masses. It was mostly fun (although it did pay very well for what little I had to do), but most importantly it got me into the "press corps" of the computer world, and that was a real bonus.

During my journalistic shrimp cocktail party circuits at the Macworld Conferences (one of which was held in San Francisco and Boston each year), I got to see fully functional prototypes of wrist-watch sized Newton devices, color screen Newton devices and Palm PDA sized Newton devices. The color ones were comparable to the last Palm system devices that I used), but the smaller form factor ones were the real winners.

Both of these were ready to go to manufacturing prototypes. Had the technology to implement the Palm device sized Newton devices existed three years earlier (at the introduction of the Newton Messagepad 110, it's quite possible that we'd still see commercially viable Newton devices today.

(The neatest thing about all of this was that I was part of a selected group of insiders who was permitted access to this sort of stuff (and had face to face interactions with both hardware and software developers), all the while wearing my press credentials around my neck and being stuffed with tasty canapes and shrimp, was pretty special. Of course, I couldn't tell much of what I saw, with NDAs and all, but it was better than nothing. And the freebies, in the form of both Apple and non-Apple hardware and software, were a real treat.)

Steve Jobs changed all of that. One of his first initiative upon his return to Apple was to 86 the entire Newton program. Needless to say, I am not (or, rather, was not) Steve Jobs' greatest fan...
 
This thread tells me how hopelessly out of touch with the latest technology I really am. I'm still trying to figure out my Ipod.

I love my iPod Touch 3rd generation. Though I'm not thrilled with it's quirky functionality with iOS v5.x versus the original v3.x

I would never have upgrade the iOS if apps all of a sudden were no longer functional and new ones would not work.

but the music is a great thing instead of all of those CDs
 
This thread tells me how hopelessly out of touch with the latest technology I really am. I'm still trying to figure out my Ipod.

I love my iPod Touch 3rd generation. Though I'm not thrilled with it's quirky functionality with iOS v5.x versus the original v3.x

I would never have upgrade the iOS if apps all of a sudden were no longer functional and new ones would not work.

but the music is a great thing instead of all of those CDs
It's actually one of the reasons that I have yet to upgrade my iPad: it works and it's speedy. Most upgrades mean more features and a slower computerish toy. The upgrades to improve performance are generally hardware-based, these days.

Oh. I have a Duo 280c on a shelf behind me. It does work and I have both a SCSI and Ethernet dock for it, somewhere. The Duo is just a bit thicker than the Toshiba netbook I have. Lot heavier, though.
 
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